Crazy Blood

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Twenty hours later, a drastically hungover Wylie Welborn sat in the stands with his family, waiting to see April’s final slopestyle routine. She had already won the cup on the first of her two finals runs, untouched by any of her competitors. The common wisdom on a clinched competition was to play the second run safe and get yourself to the podium in one unbroken piece.

“Think she’ll try that back-side double-cork ten-eighty, Wyles?” asked Belle.

“No reason to try it now. X Games probably.”

“I want to see it. Never been landed by a chick. Not in competition, for reals.”

The day was cold again, and both Beatrice and Belle scrunched close against their brother on the butt-numbing grandstands. They wore their heaviest parkas, and beanies with earflaps tied snugly down. It had been Beatrice’s idea to shave their heads in partial penance for their thievery. After ordering them to write essays on why they had stolen, and why they should not have, an octogenarian juvenile court judge had sentenced them each to five hundred hours of community service — which would average approximately five hours per week over the next two years — spring and Christmas breaks excluded. They had done their first sixteen hours back in December, at town hall, apologizing and serving hot chocolate to people who were trying to reclaim their stolen bikes, skis, and boards at a well-publicized weekend open house. Belle had told Wylie that the judge, the Honorable Caroline Hoppe, had attended both days of the event, helping herself to the spiked eggnog and glaring at her and Beatrice occasionally, making sure they took their penance seriously.

As Wylie watched on the big monitor, April shook herself loose behind the start gate, slid in, crouched, and waited. Up top, the breeze was stronger, and April’s well-known golden curls swayed below the rim of her turquoise-blue helmet. She wore the white and turquoise-blue colors that matched her eyes, had long been her signature uniform, from which she never varied.

Last night, the painless, wine-drinking Wylie had cooked for April her “lucky precompetition dinner” — a thin skirt steak done Mexican-style with onions and tomatoes, a baked potato buried in sour cream and bacon bits, asparagus, and chocolate pudding, served at 5:48 P.M., April’s lucky preevent dinnertime. After dinner, he had watched her arrange toiletries and grooming products on her bathroom counter, each bottle, tube, and tub paired with its identical mate. The couples faced each other, front label to front label. The pairs stood in descending order by height, the tallest beginning back at the mirror and the rest winding out to the counter’s edge, then along the front of the sink and back to the other side of the mirror. She hummed, her concentration was total, and she said nothing. Then a long shower.

Her lucky precompetition bedtime was 8:48. April told Wylie that all her lucky times ended in forty-eight because it had been lucky to her even as a toddler. So Wylie lay beside her in bed as she listened to music through earbuds. It was plenty loud enough for him to hear. At exactly 10:48, he nudged her, as instructed, and she pulled out the buds and turned over. For half of the night, she thrashed and called out through dreams that seemed disturbing even to Wylie, but he remained good to his word not to wake her. After that, she slept like the dead. Then, this morning, he had made for the seemingly refreshed April Holly her “lucky precompetition breakfast” of black coffee, scrambled eggs, and two packs of small waxlike chocolate doughnuts, served at 8:48.

Now the starting gate swung out and she launched, the crowd cheering. Studying her videos, Wylie had come to admire her unhurried starts, then how she built momentum into the body of her run, then closed with dramatic finishes. April now looked like she had just gotten out of bed and was easing her way into the day. After all, she had no clock and no opponents to beat down the hill. Why hurry? She put a little ragamuffin into it. But Wylie and everyone watching knew that she would need velocity — lots of it and soon — to get the big air she needed for her tricks.

She came off the start with a 50/50 on the downrail, held it long and casually, like a surfer having fun on a small but well-shaped wave. Wylie watched her with a smile. The crowd hooted and hollered as April, much larger than life, charged toward them on the big screen. She gapped to a board-slide switch out, then drove up the ramp with a sudden speed that seemed to be supplied from behind her, rocketlike. Then off the lip she flew, up and up into the blue sky, above the green treetops, the crowd oohing, Wylie agog. She twisted dervishly in midair, decomposing into a blur of board and body from which a favorable outcome seemed doubtful, then landed the cab-tail 270 in perfect balance, as if on springs. She scorched loudly across the trough and up the opposite flank, then launched back into the air for a switch back-side 540 multiple body roll that seemed a defiance of time and space, a thing too complex and rapid to be clearly seen. She landed with the lightness of a leaf. The crowd was wild, and Wylie held his breath.

Then she flew into authentic view from the grandstand. Wylie watched as her compact white-and-turquoise form banked frontward off the edge and back into the air. Such joy in it. The crowd hollered louder as April carved down toward them, her dazzling speed seemingly given to her again. She banked high twice and laid down another 540, so much closer to him now that Wylie could hear the sharp carve and grind of her board.

She landed with a loud crunch and shot up the next bank toward her final jump. Such wonderful speed now, even more than before, as if she’d been saving it. She sprang up over the blue edge paint and into the sky again — her biggest air so far — Wylie and the crowd sensing something new here, a raising of stakes. Higher and higher she rose. At the apex, she dropped her head and shoulders and the snowboard flashed upward, April tucking under it, board bottom to the sky, comets of ice falling, one hand on the rail for a long roll that accelerated to a blur of turquoise and white, woman and board, tangled and twisting. Then down she came. Wylie couldn’t tell what part of her would hit the ground first. The crowd had gone silent. Suddenly, April’s snowboard slashed into place beneath her and she landed hard. Her legs collapsed, springlike, and she wobbled slightly. Then she uncoiled into balance, raising her fists to the crowd and sending a wave of snow into the photogs. She carved to a stop in the middle of the out-run, beaming.

“I think I just saw, like, history,” said Belle.